The majority of work we do now, even in skilled professions, is busy work. How much of the work you do each day is unique and novel? How much of your work could have either been automated or made unnecessary long before ChatGPT? Probably most of it. We’ve long since been able to do less work and yet we continue to do the same things over and over again. Even if ChatGPT can magically do everything for us, what evidence is there that we would take advantage of it? World hunger is a trivial problem to solve given the resources we have today and yet we apparently can’t be bothered to fix that extremely low hanging fruit — why would we buck that trend by radically rethinking knowledge work… because of an LLM?
If LLMs were enough to radically change knowledge work, we already wouldn’t be wasting our lives grinding out 40 hours a week so we can retire at 65.
> World hunger is a trivial problem to solve given the resources we have today and yet we apparently can’t be bothered to fix that extremely low hanging fruit
Except world hunger isn't a resource problem at all, which sort of goes against your point. Solving the real problems are in fact quite hard as you need to solve for human greed and mental illness.
The 2% they’re referring to are businesses that are using Docker’s hosted services for free. The majority of the outrage was from people thinking about the non-business users, that is, open source projects, which Docker unintentionally implied would be impacted by this change. Docker are apologising for their poor communication which made people think this change applied to more than just a tiny portion of the user base (who are probably happy to pay). They’re not apologising for the change.
Anybody who uses "docker pull" or "FROM" and not pointing at their own hosting or their own paid Docker account was affected as evidenced by the thousands of comments worried about the impact.
> We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them.
> Will open source images I rely on get deleted?
> Not by Docker. Public images will only disappear if the maintainer of the image decides to proactively delete it from Docker Hub. If the maintainer takes no action, we will continue to distribute their public images.
People may have thought they were affected, which is what they seem to be apoligising for.
They also are saying the maintainers will be unable to update the images after the 30 days. So the panic and bitching are perfectly deserved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35188691
For TEAM accounts that aren't "Docker sponsored open source" teams.
They should allow a TEAM->PERSONAL conversion for any open source account that doesn't qualify to be "Docker sponsored." But really this is a communications fail more than anything.
This only ever applied to the *Team* accounts. I have a paid non-team/personal account, but I am also aware that I could have a free personal account if I didn't need private repositories.
In other words, they weren't clear enough in their communication, which is what they're apologizing for.
But the internet outrage mob is going to yell about the evil of The Man no matter what I say, so I don't know why I bother...
> Less than 2% of Docker users have a Free Team organization on their account.
I don't think so. The quote above is what they say on that page, and I think that is a pretty useless metric. It affects 2% of all Docker Hub users, 100% of all Free Team users.
Most React codebases benefit from the simplicity of functional components, because they fit into the model most people have of websites + web apps. If you’re doing anything complex, you’re in a very small group.
I would argue the inverse: if your project relatively simple enough that hooks don't feel messy, then it probably doesn't need to be a React app to begin with.
Class components are just (IMO) cleaner, and I find myself saddened at the level of disarray most codebases with hooks are nowadays. Enough has been written elsewhere about how hooks require one to keep more in their head; class components have an agreed up layout/structure/etc that is important in large codebases.
The most frustrating part of this is when you run into some library that is all in on hooks and insists you use hooks, but your project has been using class-based components so far. I was having a great time making a game prototype with react-three-fiber until some model loading code was just like "fuck you, use hooks" and I ended up wrapping a bunch of functional components in special ways to basically isolate the hooks stuff so I don't have to deal with the headache of it all gradually encroaching on the rest of my perfectly functioning project. It's frustrating because every time I wonder how to make it not a mess, the answer is "haha, we lied, they're barely supported; class-based components are for losers and you should feel bad."
It's just frustrating. Couldn't they have had the decency to fork / rename React for all this and leave the old branch to die instead of turning the entire space into some kind of pedantic war-zone for several years?
On a thread a while back there was a Microsoft eng who was on a team that looked into trends with bugs.
IIRC They reported that hooks were a common source of problems.
Visually they look simple but they hide a lot complex and nuanced semantics. Once you start layering and composing it becomes hard to reason about when a value updates, when a re-renders will occur, and when a value even resolves(it may take many re-renders for a value you need to finally get set).
Pretty much nobody has enough cash held in a bank account for this to be a concern. People were worried about SVB because it was so overrepresented with accounts of more than the insured limit because it was used by cash-rich technology companies. A normal person, even if they’re rich, probably has most of their net worth in assets (real estate, investments) and is not holding cash.
Just don’t exceed the insured amount in a single bank, and if you do need to have more than $250k in cash… either open a second account at a different bank or donate it.
Banks are slow moving institutions. I think most have not yet come to grips with the idea of a bunch of 20-somethings getting handed millions of $ for a nice plan but with $0 revenue. OTOH, SVB was supposed to be specialized in such cases.
Passing the LSAT with no time limit and a copy of the training material in front of you is not an achievement. Anybody here could have written code to pass the LSAT. Standardised tests are only hard to solve with technology if you add a bunch of constraints! Standardised tests are not a test of intelligence, they’re a test of information retention — something that technology has been able to out perform humans on for decades. LLMs are a bridge between human-like behaviour and long established technology.
You’ve added a technical constraint. I didn’t say arbitrary. Standardised tests are standard. The point is that a simple lookup is all you need. There’s lots of interesting aspects to LLMs but their ability to pass standardised tests means nothing for standardised tests.
You think that it’s being fed questions that it has a lookup table for? Have you used these models? They can answer arbitrary new questions. This newest model was tested against tests it hasn’t seen before. You understand that that isn’t a lookup problem, right?
The comment I replied to suggested that the author was fearful of what LLMs meant for the future because they can pass standardised tests. The point I’m making is that standardised tests are literally standardised for a reason: to test information retention in a standard way, they do not test intelligence.
Information retention and retrieval is a long solved problem in technology, you could pass a standardised test using technology in dozens of different ways, from a lookup table to Google searches.
The fact that LLMs can complete a standardised test is interesting because it’s a demonstration of what they can do but it has not one iota of impact on standardised testing! Standardised tests have been “broken” for decades, the tests and answers are often kept under lock and key because simply having access to the test in advance can make it trivial to pass. A standardised test is literally an arbitrary list of questions.
I have no idea what you are talking about now. You claimed to be able to write a program that can pass the LSAT. Now it sounds like you think the LSAT is a meaningless test because it... has answers?
I suspect that your own mind is attempting to do a lookup on a table entry that doesn't exist.
The original comment I replied to is scared for the future because GPT-4 passed the LSAT and other standardised tests — they described it as “terrifying”. The point I am making is that standardised tests are an invention to measure how people learn through our best attempt at a metric: information retention. You cannot measure technology in the same way because it’s an area where technology has been beating humans for decades — a spreadsheet will perform better than a human on information retention. If you want to beat the LSAT with technology you can use any number of solutions, an LLM is not required. I could score 100% on the LSAT today if I was allowed to use my computer.
What’s interesting about LLMs is their ability to do things that aren’t standardised. The ability for an LLM to pass the LSAT is orders of magnitude less interesting than its ability to respond to new and novel questions, or appear to engage in logical reasoning.
If you set aside the arbitrary meaning we’ve ascribed to “passing the LSAT” then all the LSAT is, is a list of questions… that are some of the most practiced and most answered in the world. More people have written and read about the LSAT than most other subjects, because there’s an entire industry dedicated to producing the perfect answers. It’s like celebrating Google’s ability to provide a result for “movies” — completely meaningless in 2023.
Standardised tests are the most uninteresting and uninspiring aspect of LLMs.
Anyway good joke ha ha ha I’m stupid ha ha ha. At least you’re not at risk of an LLM ever being able to author such a clever joke :)
If a person with zero legal training was to sit down in front of the LSAT, with all of the prep material and no time limit, are you saying that they wouldn’t pass?
Considering your username, I'm not surprised that you have completely misunderstood what an LLM is. There is no material or data stored in the model, just weights in a network
I know what an LLM is. My point is that “doesn’t have the data in memory” is a completely meaningless and arbitrary constraint when considering the ability to use technology to pass a standardised test. If you can explain why weights in a network is a unique threat to standardised tests, compared to, say, a spreadsheet, please share.
It's not that standardized tests are under threat. It's that those weights in a network are significantly more similar to how our brains work than a spreadsheet and similarly flexible.
weights are data relationships made totally quantitative. imagine claiming the human brain doesn't hold data simply because it's not in readable bit form.
The cashier would rather you leave them in peace than hit them with the same tiresome self-congratulatory remark they hear day in day out. Please use the self checkouts instead.
You mean to tell me that my joke that I should get the item for free when it doesn't ring up; you mean to tell me I'm not hilarious and that the cashier's heard it before?
Please don't use the checkout, why should corporations worth billions and tens of billions (I guess that's what Walmart is worth) get to outsource some of their work onto their clients?
As a client, using the self-checkout is (usually) a choice I get to make. I choose to use the self-checkout because it is often faster than waiting in a line. I am thankful for the opportunity to put in my own effort in exchange for faster completion and reduced prices.
I remember reading a study somewhere that the self-checkout isn't actually faster. It feels faster because you're busy instead of passively standing in line.
That depends on the implementation. E.g. Sam's Club lets you scan items as you put them into your cart and just walk past the registers.
In the local grocery store at rush hour, cashier lines are long and self-checkout tends to be quicker for buying 3 items. Taking a whole cart into self-checkout is slower than a cashier, because the self-checkout has like a 5% chance per item of going into "assistance needed" mode.
What's important to me is my time. I don't care whether it's spent scanning things myself or waiting in line for someone else to scan them. I also don't care about punishing Walmart, so whether they "get to" do something is totally uninteresting to me.
I just want to pay for my items and get out of the store, in whatever way works.
This is nearly getting to the point of "don't use shovel's, think of all the ditch diggers we'll put out of work"
I find places with scan as you shop apps way better than waiting in a checkout line. I get a running total of what I have in the cart, and when I'm done, I just leave without a line.
I saw on tiktok (yeah I know) where a lawyer says they never use it because you can be liable for stealing for anything you forgot scan. I never use it cause occasionally the cashier will let you know that there is a coupon for something you are purchasing.
At least 9 times out of 10, the self-checkout is a better experience for me. I can scan things at my own pace, pack them in my bags the way I like, and listen to my D&D podcast rather than having to interact with a stranger, unless the system acts up.
As pxl97 said, I preferred being able to scan things as I shopped and not have to stop at the checkout except to pay, but the one place around here that had that discontinued it a few months ago.
We need to push back hard against the idea that automation is "stealing" people's jobs; the promise of automation has always been that of more money for less work. We need to remind everyone of that, and reverse the trend of automation simply putting more and more money in the pockets of the already-wealthy at everyone else's expense.
I’d normally agree — if you ignore an important email, the consequences are on you — but the Google verification process is very hostile and Google do constantly send emails about “important” but actually innocuous things which trains users to consider these emails as unimportant.
The OP certainly has some culpability but having bad experience of this process myself multiple times, it does feel as if Google designed it to be hostile — the emails being just one part of it.
Google Cloud is great in many ways, I love the product, but the billing is such a pain, top to bottom.
The reason employees are anxious about their next pay checks is because of the VC-induced panic which is entirely self-serving and has not one iota to do with making payroll — that’s just a palatable hand-wavey justification for demanding government intervention because their precious points are at risk.
I have a great deal of empathy for the workers anxious about being paid, but that goes without saying, there’s nothing to discuss there. Workers are victims of the VCs who rightly deserve to be derided for their behaviour, both in this incident and more broadly in squeezing every last drop of profit from normal people.
I don’t understand what you’re asking of people on HN. Are you asking us to preface all our comments with “…not all SVB customers are leeches…”?
I also think that people here are missing the game that was played by the VCs. I have a friend working at Insight who told me that they were preparing to issue loans and further funding to portfolio companies. This of course is less ideal than having the government bail their portfolio out, but they would have had no choice. So, having shot themselves in the foot by starting a panic, they decided that the best way to avoid getting in trouble was to push the panic even further to the point that it threatened the entire economic system.
Personally, that is what I find so disgusting and that is the source of my animosity. I believe the fed ultimately chose to maximize the probability of avoiding a crisis over punishing these morons. I think that is wise but still not good.
The analogy I choose is this. Imagine there is a forest that is due for a bit of a natural fire. We should let it burn - but wait it turns out some people built and sold houses in this forest. Instead of evacuating and having these people suffer and need to relocate, we put out the fire. Since we put out this fire, these people living in a hazardous way continue to do so. Eventually a massive fire will start and kill those people and spread to other areas that it otherwise would not have. All because we decided to stop the “maintenance” fire from clearing the brush.
I’ll start out by making my position clear: I have a strong aversion to software engineers like you, and I consider software engineers like you to be toxic people who are a drain on organisations. Anyway…
If you approach work as a zero sum game that you’re participating in against your co-workers then you’ll be deeply unhappy wherever you go, and you’ll be a toxic force in the workplace. Work is collaborative, work has a purpose, work is about contributing to the greater good, work is more than the sum of its parts, work is about creating value.
There’s no shame in being someone who doesn’t work well with others, and you’re under no obligation to change, but it’s your responsibility to find an environment where you’re either a positive or at worst, a neutral force. Choosing to work in jobs that make you deeply unhappy is irresponsible and unfair on those around you. If you find working with product managers to be a miserable experience filled with frustration and resentment, then the responsible thing to do is to remove yourself from that situation. Find a job within a company that uses a structure that’s a better fit for you, don’t drag people down.
I won’t preach to you about how important collaboration is, or how much you’re missing out on by operating with this toxic attitude, but I will say that the problems you’re facing have nothing to do with software engineering or product management, they’re human problems.
Running your own software consultancy can be an amazing and rewarding experience that presents new opportunities for growth and new intellectually-stimulating challenges, it’s an experience you may love, but it’s absolutely crucial to understand that human interaction scales with responsibility, and running your own company (even with just yourself) has a lot of responsibility.
I think your final paragraph shows that deep down you know that you’re the cause of these challenges at work. Maybe the problem isn’t work related at all, maybe the frustration at work is a symptom of the real problem, like being unhappy in yourself, maybe the solution is actually therapy or maybe you’re burned out and need a break.
Ultimately, as software engineers, we are very privileged to earn great money and have far more respect / autonomy / trust than most others in the workplace, and so the ball is in your court. If you think your co-workers are the problem, quit. Don’t waste your life stewing in misery, you’re better than that.
I always keep it professional, which is also why I feel like I have no choice but to share when I see pitfalls or have a better approach from past experience with seeing exactly what went wrong in similar projects. I have even dealt with people who are hard headed or say things like "fuck the customer" (really) and don't want to listen, and I just preface it with "I know but I just have to say it, it's still your decision what to do". However I've even had it come back around where the thing I warned about came true and since they were in the trusted position they were able to blame the failure on the developers! It's insane how often people will throw you under the bus just to protect their throne of lies.
If you sincerely believe that you’re a shining star being dragged down by your co-workers, get a new job. A software engineer who sincerely cares about the impact of their work on the customer is very valuable and you’ll find happy, positive, kind co-workers at lots of companies who will value you every single day. Don’t waste your life being miserable surrounded by people who drag you down.
Do product manager actually treat software engineers as humans though? It works both ways.
How do you know the OP is toxic? Is it because they are jaded by the amount of times they have told product / architect on the actual implications but have been ignored?
We've lost how things should work.
Is all that matters the design, the idea of a feature or the architecture diagram and ignore everything in practice? Everything sounds good in theory.
I've seen way too many product owners add features without understanding the implications and no 1 from engineer has the power to stop it. When it blows up the engineers get blamed even if they've made enough noise.
If you were building a house, it'd crash and lives would die. Real architects are way more responsible.
Why don't you think about why we've come to this state? There are multiple comments agreeing with the OP and we've all experienced it. The manager considers engineering as a "resource" and whether we're backend, frontend or whatever we're all the same and can do the same work. If there's a crunch just throw more "resources" at it, right?
Man you've drank the coolaide big time. Work isn't about those things, and you should recognize when someone knows something more than you and show some humility. PMs I work with somehow always know the technology better than the people working with it every day. It is amazing!
Everyone probably needs to hear this from time to time, myself included. But you should recognize that the PM probably does not know more about tech that the OP has been working in day in and day out. It is possible they do but unlikely.
If LLMs were enough to radically change knowledge work, we already wouldn’t be wasting our lives grinding out 40 hours a week so we can retire at 65.